Location, Location, Location

It’s an old adage in the estate agency world that there’s nothing like the location of a property to ensure it’s desirability, well the very same can be said of a logistics business like The Finishing Line.

Having been based in south Essex for the past 28 years we’ve seen the incredible evolution of the landscape here along with the global changes in business and the opportunities that these are bringing to our sector in particular.

From my window I can see the incredible development taking place at London Gateway – an enormous £1.5 billion development to build the UK’s first major multi-modal deep sea container port and Europe’s largest logistics park. As well as this unprecedented development, in the last couple of months the Highways Agency has announced a new lower Thames crossing that will be passing just to the west of us – this will lighten the load on the 50 year old Dartford Crossing and help to cement even further the incredible geographical advantage we have over our competitors.

But really what is that advantage and why are we so lucky to be based here ?

Take a look at a map (here’s a link to Google for you) you can see just where we are located a stones throw from The Thames, the lifeblood of London and the UK’s largest consumer market. We’re quite literally on the A13 – a major artery into central London (30 minutes to the city) and a road that taps into the M25, the major orbital motorway of London. Don’t forget also we have the London Container Terminal at Tilbury and the new London Distribution Park AND we have Gatwick and Stansted airports both less than an hour away.

When you take all these geographical elements and look at the long term vision and goal for the area (see London Gateway above) then it all adds up to form a competitive advantage we’ve termed “Green Laning”.

So what do we mean by Green Laning?

Green Laning is our definition of doing business quicker and more responsibly – essentially it’s a combination of our location, our facilities and most importantly the pure efficiency of our operations team in their capacity for handling big volumes, consolidating titles and delivering direct to wholesale. (you’re buying into our 28 years experience of creating efficiencies at every step of the process.)

The end result – we drive unnecessary costs from the supply chain.

(see our infographic below which gives an idea of how our location alone gives us that geographical advantage).

Here’s a scenario – your goods arrive at London Gateway – we bring them to our distribution centre (less than 15 minutes way), we de-van them, process and store them so they’re then ready for rapid re-distribution to wholesale anywhere in the country.

This may sound like an obvious way to do business but currently most distribution centres are located in the Midlands and so containers are driven across the country to then be distributed. Think of the added cost not only to the pocket but also to the environment from all those extra miles !

With our close access to the M25, London and the new Thames Crossing (which will increase our access speed to the channel and Europe) then you have to ask yourself – why would you do business with anyone else?